But alas, Obama couldn’t risk his perfect record of kowtowing to the gun lobby and its maniacal cadre of gun owners. Fat lot of good it did him, since idiots like Zach Wamp still campaign on protecting our guns from Obama. Fear not gun owners, Obama doesn’t want to make you fill out any extra paperwork or register your guns with the ATF. That’s right. His idea? Send a bunch of National Guard troops to the border for a summer vacation.
What's your opinion? Should we spend another month of two arguing whether it's 90% or 19%? Isn't the fact simple enough that it's too much, whatever the percentage is?
Flying Junior included an interesting aspect to the argument. Earlier, the pro-gun argument seemed to be that the guns which "could not be traced" were the ones the investigators knew were not from the States. The idea was that all the early reports were carefully worded to conceal the fact that the majority of guns seized were in fact from elsewhere. But, now we have this idea.
The record keeping is not always perfect. In trying to track guns confiscated in Mexico last year, agents found that one in five of the guns could not be traced because the dealers had no record of the sale or had gone out of business and the records had been lost. Even when the original legal buyer is located, a gun owner in many states, can legally say “I lost it” or “I sold it to someone I do not know.”
Dealers are not obligated to tell the authorities about multiple sales of rifles like the AK-47, as they must do with pistols.
That would mean that many of the "untraced" weapons did indeed come from the U.S.
What's your opinion? Do we have to revise the figure back up towards the famous 90%? Or, do you agree with me that the exact percentage is not the point? The point is too many guns are flowing into Mexico due to lax or non-existent gun laws and poor enforcement of the laws we do have.
Please leave a comment.
So, you want more laws for them to completly ignore that do little more than "inconvenience", as you put it, the law abiding?
ReplyDelete"Isn't the fact simple enough that it's too much, whatever the percentage is?"
ReplyDeleteI agree. Any percentage is too much. The solution is to close the border or at least take border security seriously. Sending NG to the border to observe is a joke. Might as well send the Boy Scouts. They can work a radio and binoculars just as well.
I guess the cartels are going to have to roll a grenade into an American police station before the point is made that American laws will not stop Mexican criminals from traversing our border with guns, drugs, money, and people. What will stop them is a few thousand heavily armed soldiers.
"In trying to track guns confiscated in Mexico last year, agents found that one in five of the guns could not be traced because the dealers had no record of the sale or had gone out of business and the records had been lost."
ReplyDeleteWrong. When a dealer goes out of business, he must immediately forfeit his records to the ATF. Not to do so is a crime.
"Dealers are not obligated to tell the authorities about multiple sales of rifles like the AK-47, as they must do with pistols.
That would mean that many of the "untraced" weapons did indeed come from the U.S."
Wrong again. A dealer must keep track of where every single firearm was sold even if one person bought multiple AK47s. They can be traced just like handguns.
If you truly want to stop the bulk of guns reaching the cartel from the U.S. you will stop selling and giving guns to the Mexican government. You want your percentage? 90% of all guns obtained by the drug loons were bought or stolen by Mexican government soldiers and employees.
And yes, just because some third world cesspool can't control their criminals is no reason for any laws or restrictions here. It is already illegal to send guns to Mexico so what do you propose? Making it illegaller? That will help.
Well, at least we can all agree Obama's western dude ranch holiday for the guard troops is just a big play date.
ReplyDeleteWhat I got out of the NY Times piece was that without a central registry, obviously administered by ATF, suspicious patterns of purchasing guns are not available to scrutiny by law enforcement until it is months to years after the fact.
I refuse to believe that there is nothing that can be done short of a heavily armed or impenetrable border.
Wave on venerable American warlords.
There ya go. A proper registry would make the info available before and during the crime, not afterwards when it's too late.
ReplyDeleteThe few guns in Mexico that are not banned are all registered--or rather they are supposed to be registered. Working out real well down there, huh?
ReplyDeleteSadly, Mike, no registry can identify the gun while or before it's being used in the commission of a crime.
ReplyDeleteThe only difference between the current system and the proposed "central regsitry" is the amount of time required to retrieve the information.
Oddly, increasing or decreasing the time doesn't matter much at all. It takes orders of magnitude more time to prosecute and registry queries are not on the critical path in that process.
Yes, but what you're convenienltly omitting, you Mr. Anonymous and FWM both, is that it's not individual crimes we're talking about identifying, it's trends. It would especially serve in identifying those trends involving certain FFL guys who have a vested interest in concealing their activities.
ReplyDelete